Week 6 Newsletter: October 16-20

Welcome to the weekly newsletter! Read on for details on the week, big wins, and fun activities.

Writing workshops was one for the books this week! Each studio dug deep within themselves and in their writing to build a strong foundation for the weeks ahead.

The launchpad and navigator studios will be doing a “My Hero Story” quest where they will write about an inspirational entrepreneur. This week they practiced their interviewing skills, as well as their descriptive and vivid writing skills.

The foundation and navigator transition studios will be doing a “Fictional Short Story Quest” where they will learn all about the basics of short story writing, character development, and structuring your writing. We will be looking at some classics and having some awesome workshops throughout this session!

In history the N/LP studios continued digging into and digesting Hamilton while the F/NT studios learned all about the tension between the English and he French fighting over the colonies, and did a project where they put themselves in the shoes of Quakers in the 17th century. For their activity, they made camouflage shirts by hammering leaves into fabric!

The Eagles started their new art project with Charlie! For their product design session, they will be designing and building their very own clocks. The project will include woodworking and sculpting with clay, and the final product, their very own hand-crafted and designed clocks, will get them their art badge for the session. This week they decided what shape/character their clocks will be so they can be laser cut and ready to work with next week!

We had a blast with the chess quest this week! It definitely finished with a bang…here’s what we did with it throughout the week:

On Tuesday we watched Queen of Katwe. The film is based on a true story and is about a young Ugandan girl who lives in the slums becomes fascinated with the game of Chess when she is introduced to it by a missionary visiting her country. She goes through a rigorous and emotional journey with it in her life as she must make hard choices for herself and her family.

On Thursday we took a field trip to the International Chess park! The kids had a blast as they played with the experts and masters who practice there everyday.

And finally on Friday we had our final chess tournament! It was so awesome watching everyone use their hard work and knowledge for their final challenge of the quest. Congrats to Sinoeh for winning the championship, and to Reese for winning second place!